Persons celebrating an Anniversary in May 2005

In the merry month of May we will send our first greetings to Florida, our new US member Wesley "Ted" Brandhorst turned 72 on May, 9th in the town of Sarasota. His career and his chess development is documented in detail in the Internet, that’s why we would like to refer the curious reader to these pages: US Chess Federation and Ralph Marconi's Chess Page.

We have taken the photo opposite from Chess Life - August 2004 (pdf-file).

A world-famous personality of chess is the next one on our birthday list, Lothar Schmid looked back on remarkable 77 years on May, 10th. Only a short time ago the chess grandmaster (OTB and CC), International Arbiter, collector (owning the largest private collection of chess books worldwide) and editor (owner of the Karl May Publishing House) was introduced in detail with an article by Marion Faber, see Publications of our Members. Additionally we recommend the 13-page article by Raj Tischbierek which was published on the occasion of Lothar Schmid's 70th birthday ("Ich brauchte noch ein zweites Leben" [I would need a second life], Schach 6/1998, p. 38ff.) – to a great extent Lothar Schmid got a chance to speak himself reporting on his altogether very successful but not always unspoilt and carefree journey through life. Without a doubt his activities as an arbiter of several candidates and world championship matches are amongst the highlights – we hardly need to remind the outstanding matches Bobby Fischer – Boris Spassky in 1972 and 1992 – and naturally we would appreciate it very much if Lothar Schmid were given the honour of the 'Chess Arbiter of the Century' (to be awarded at the 10th youth chess olympiad Novi Sad starting June 26, 2005).

Norbert Fieberg from the German town of Witten has only just been admitted to the KWA group, we are pleased to be able to wish him simultaneously many happy returns of the day – he turned 46 on May, 18th. Our new member is especially well-known for being a collector of chess literature and chess memorabilia and being a frequent visitor of book auctions, additionally he attended the KWA Foundation Meeting and the Forchheim General Meeting, so many of us already met him personally.

Wolfgang Angerstein from the Rhenish town of Erkrath is the next one making his debut in our column, he celebrated his 47th birthday on May, 24th. Being a "professor MD" he is very busy in his job as the head of the department of Phoniatrics and Pedaudiology at the university hospital of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, we can only mention briefly his diverse free-time activities here: besides his passion for music which he is known to share with many other chess players he is a collector of chess literature (focussed on "Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game" and "Estonian chess literature"). His interest for Emanuel Lasker particularly concentrated on the "column game Laska" invented by the same, a crucial experience at the Potsdam Lasker Conference in January, 2001 was the "trigger": more on this subject reveals his lecture on the game Laska in Berlin on 2003-02-07 where he gave a summary of his previous research and his meetings in the worldwide "Laska scene".

As the only real person celebrating an anniversary we congratulate chess friend and collector Bernd Segebarth, he looked back on 6 decades on May, 27th. Some of us could often meet him at certain Brunswick book auctions, so it's not impossible to see him again on next June, 18th ...